O.M.A.C. #2—So Kirbytastic. Really. I can’t believe the level that Giffen is performing at. Dude is ripping up the pages. Also, I loved the footnote telling us that the protagonist had called his girl in between issues. Too funny. I do have to call Didio out for flagrant misusage of “y’all,” though at least he got the apostrophe right, which you can’t say about even most folks in Texas. But the term should never be applied to a singular person, it’s always collective. Regional slang aside, I really enjoyed this issue and can’t believe it’s the lowest selling of the entire line. Bow down before the King, True Believers!
ANIMAL MAN #2—Lemire/Foreman continue with another installment that’s even creepier than the first issue while delving a bit into the Animal Man mythos. It’s really bizarre to me that DC made such a deal of incorporating this book into the main universe and then these guys show up with like the most Vertigo book since Dream was trying to decide between Change or Die and Jesse Custer got a mad-on for the Almighty. I mean, I picked this thing up and it said, Fookin’ ell. I would have thought that Foreman’s art style might alienate some readers, but folks seem to be pretty much into it. This remains one of the relaunch’s better offerings.
SWAMP THING #2—Paquette is dropping some business, here. He’s always been the man, but if you go back and look at that first BATMAN INC. arc all the way up to these pages, what a serious run in such a short time. And getting a little more adventurous with the layouts, kind of a creeping effect from Williams over on BATWOMAN. Snyder’s job here is pretty thankless and he does fine with it, though the last page was pretty telegraphed. Still on board with this one. Seems like I heard maybe Francavilla was no longer subbing in on arcs?
STORMWATCH #2—The banter between Apollo and Midnighter really does nothing more than reinforce for me how this is Ellis-lite. But the bit about Harry versus the Moon is pretty serious and makes up for it quite a bit. Interested to see what Cornell’s got in the hopper for this one. But really wish Ellis would either take some drugs and wade in to slay this last dragon before forever retiring from superhero comics or that the next crackling mad bastard I’ve never heard of would just get thrown in the deep end, here.
THE BOYS #59—Brutal. That last scene is haunting, going to stay with me longer than most of the horrah that this series has already brought us. Butcher is untethered, off the chain, and we are two arcs to go. It’s going to be quite a year. I can’t believe I didn’t read PREACHER monthly, this is too much fun.
X-MEN: SCHISM #5—And so it all came to that. Fantastic characterization and dialogue throughout, but the resolution doesn’t wash. They just, what, ganged up and beat the unstoppable suitcase Sentinel off-panel? That’s a pretty non-schismatic anti-climax. Still on-board with the X-relaunch, but enthusiasm more than a bit quashed.
CASANOVA: AVARITIA #2—This book is, yeah, still a psychotic fucking maniac. But, a hypergenius as well. So so much to parse in this thing, I've read it like five times and feel like I'm just barely scratching the surface. I mean, the cover really says it all, completely conveys the wild-eyed madness glory, and then is just a total lie and doesn't even happen on the interior. The retasking of Cass's mission in between issues is interesting, the effect it has on him. You would think that it would be better to only have to kill one guy over and over instead of snuffing out entire timelines, but I guess it's just the look in his eye? Is the Luther at the con supposed to be Fraction? It seems like a pretty clear analogue. Or maybe Ba just dressed him up as Fraction to be cheeky. And you’ve got to love the <> dialogue in 9.924. This thing is so much too clever for its own good, anyone who doesn't find it brilliant just isn't applying themselves. Only two issues of this arc to go? This 32 pages at a time gig is messing me up pretty good. Casanova Quinn is the reason why. And when.
****
BEST OF WEEK: HOUSE OF MYSTERY #42—Now the best part might have been that even though I do too well of a job keeping up with the tiniest fragments of news as they burst out over the Internet, I had no idea that this was the final issue. I mean, wait well, that’s not quite it, obviously Sturges has been turning out the lights for the past few months here, and maybe earlier some time I was hoping that this would be the last issue just because of numbers, and you know, Willingham’s name on the cover should really have been more of a clue, but it wasn’t until I hit that last panel that it seriously dawned on me that I was reading the very last issue of this consistently rewarding and exceptionally crafted monthly comic book. Really, it’s testament to how much ridiculous goodness is erupting throughout the industry that this title wasn’t championed by far more, heralded to the skies. You know, I dig the hell out of FABLES, but looking back on it now, seems like this one gave me more thrill per month. Which Old Bill can’t feel too bad about because he’s of course a big part of what makes this such a success, not only from a conceptual level, but right here on the bookends, his first and last stories for this series, just such top drawer stuff. STORies, right? The finest kind, that get you all thrilled up because for all the words in your live you jam through, there have to be a few, a series of them every now and again that you run across that just do it for you like few things do. This series was one of those, because you never knew where it was going and almost couldn’t remember where it was coming from because it kept surprising you, molding itself into surprising permutations when you least expected. And you never knew who was going to be drawing these gorgeous pages, but they were guaranteed to melt your face. Jaime came and did it just a couple months after I finally started in on LOCAS, so that hit me harder than most, felt like. So so many great names came through and turned in gorgeous work, really almost no one better than Inaki Miranda and Eva de la Cruz barreling up out of nowhere for the last one, but for all that, it never stopped being Rossi’s house. What a force. And Sturges. Hard not to gush about what he did here. Will just hold it down to I thought “Fig Keele, Teen Detective” in #31 was just an eensy bit better than “The Hollows” in #1, and he might have gotten him again here in the last issue, both of them just crushing work. And it meant so much to me that he really couldn’t stop telling until they pried the computer out of his hands, was still weaving tangential beauties with the last words of his afterword, wait, wait, always just one more thing. Really great series that I’m even more choked about ending than I would have been, because aw, the way it managed to sneak out on me, leave me needing so much more. That last panel, man.
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